AUSTIN, Texas. (Sept. 21, 2014) - One race remains in the 2014 TUDOR United SportsCar Championship season, with Saturday’s Lone Star Le Mans shaking up three of the four point races heading into the season-ending Petit Le Mans powered by Mazda at Road Atlanta on Saturday, Oct. 4.
The race from Austin’s Circuit of The Americas will be televised today on FOX. The two-hour telecast airs around the network’s NFL game coverage.
Roughly one-quarter of the U.S., including many west coast markets, will receive the telecast from 2-4 p.m. ET (11 a.m. – 1 p.m. PT), prior to the “late” NFL game. Nearly three-quarters of the nation will get the race beginning at 4:30 p.m. ET after the “early” NFL game telecast. Check local listings.
Scott Pruett held off Alex Brundle and Joao Barbosa in an exciting battle down the stretch, giving Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates its third victory of the season while preventing Action Express Racing from scoring additional points in the fight for the Prototype title.
Pruett’s triumph snapped Action Express Racing’s two-race winning streak, although Barbosa and Christian Fittipaldi both led the race in the No. 5 Corvette DP. The third-place finish unofficially extended Action Express Racing’s lead to 22 points over Wayne Taylor Racing’s Ricky and Jordan Taylor, who finished seventh in the No. 10 Konica Minolta Corvette DP.
Fittipaldi and Barbosa have accumulated 316 points, to 294 for the Taylors. Another point back, with 293, are Michael Valiante and Richard Westbrook, who took sixth in the No. 90 VisitFlorida.com Corvette DP.
The GT Le Mans (GTLM) championship lead changed hands at the Lone Star Le Mans, with SRT Motorsports Dodge Viper SRT GTS-R drivers Jonathan Bomarito and Kuno Wittmer taking over the lead with their second triumph of the season. Entering the race with a seven-point advantage, Corvette Racing’s Antonio Garcia now trails by seven points, 300-293.
GT Daytona (GTD) entered Austin with five drivers representing three teams tied for the lead. Turner Motorsport BMW driver Dane Cameron finished third to break the logjam, and now leads Alex Job Racing Porsche 911 GT America drivers Cooper MacNeil and Leh Keen by four points, 275-271. AIM Autosport Ferrari 458 Italia drivers Bill Sweedler and Townsend Bell are another three points back with 268 points.
The lone championship to be decided in Texas was in Prototype Challenge (PC), where Colin Braun and Jon Bennett clinched the drivers’ title. However, the PC team title will go down to the wire at Road Atlanta, with Braun and Bennett’s CORE autosport holding an 11-point lead over 8Star Motorsports, which will take a two-race winning streak with driver Sean Rayhall into the finale.
Today’s broadcast is the first of two, two-hour TUDOR Championship telecasts on the FOX network. A two-hour program featuring Petit Le Mans powered by Mazda coverage will air on Sunday, Oct. 5.
